"the onliest thing I can do is let 'em see they ain't broke me." AOC Pulls An Ollie Grimes On The Floor Of Congress

I just read the section in Leonard Pitt's novel The Last Thing You Surrender, where Oliver is beaten up by five white men led by Earl Ray, a poor white man.  It's World War II.  They are all working in a ship building factory near Mobile, Alabama.  No ambulance was willing to take Ollive and the factory supervisors allowed a couple of black workers to take him to

"a white hospital that maintained a small ward for Negroes in its basement. . ."

Thelma, who carpools to the factory with Ollie and four other black women goes to see him in the hospital that night.  She finds him sitting up, dressed, bandaged up and he tells her he has a fractured skull.

Thelma gasped.  "Well then, why you sitting up in bed?  Why ain't you lying down?"
He smiled  "'Cause I'm going home," he said.  "In fact, your timing couldn't be better.  I was wonderin' how I was gon' get there."
Thelma was scandalized, "Home?  I ain't takin' you home.  You need to stop bein' such a stubborn jackass and stay here so the doctors can fix you up."
Some indefinable sorrow crept into his eyes then.  "Honey, I aint the one sayin' I got to go home," he explained in a patient voice. "They is."
. . . Doctors done already give me my discharge papers and my prescription.  You gon' stand there all night, or you gon' help a man up?"

She gets him home and he tells her he'll be waiting for her to pick him up tomorrow.  She argues he can't go to work in his condition.  He says if she doesn't pick him up, he'll have to take the bus.

"Ollie looked at her. "That crazy bastard like to kill me."  he said.  "Ain't nobody gon' arrest him, 'cause they was all wearin' masks, so I can't swear in court it was him - and that's if they'd let a nigger testify in the first place, which they won't.  But it was him. . .
A fierce light danced in his one good eye.  "So the onliest thing I can do is let 'em see they ain't broke me.  That's the onliest revenge I get against 'em, to walk through that gate on my own two legs when the bell ring tomorrow mornin' and let 'em see - let 'em all see -even after what they done, Ollie Grimes still standin'." (emphasis added)

[Auto-correct hates this dialect.  I hope I fixed all its corrections and reconnections.]

This is what I immediately thought of when I watched the video below of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking on the floor of the US House of Representatives addressing the fact that Rep. Yoho of Florida had called her names and degraded her on the Capitol steps, and then the next day gave a non-apology apology.  Listen to her speak in her own words.  It doesn't matter what you think of her politics.  The Republicans have abandoned all decorum and decency.  There was a time when members of Congress, despite their differences, treated each other with, at least, outward courtesy.

Rep @AOC: "I do not need Rep. Yoho to apologize to me. Clearly he does not want to. Clearly when given the opportunity he will not & I will not stay up late at night waiting for an apology from a man who has no remorse over calling women & using abusive language towards women." pic.twitter.com/XKymFh3Oyf

— CSPAN (@cspan) July 23, 2020

AOC has a little more power to confront her tormentor than Ollie had. But it's the same situation. A white man beating on a woman (this time) of color because he's got some sort of chip on his shoulder and thinks he can insult her with impunity. When are these guys going to learn?

I'd note that Wikipedia says Rep. Yoho, a veterinarian, is NOT running for reelection in November.

What We Didn't Learn In History About Plagues

Andrew Sullivan has an essay in New York Magazine: "A Plague Is an Apocalypse. But It Can Bring a New World. The meaning of this one is in our hands"  on the history of plagues, or maybe plagues in history, is a better way to phrase it.  As I think about my knowledge of such things, I was taught about the Black Death and as best as I can remember, the message was:  "You should be glad you live in a civilized society where this doesn't happen anymore."

And I probably learned that just after a vaccine for polio had been created.  I don't recall anyone connecting the scourge of polio with the Black Plague.

Sullivan starts with what he calls, perhaps the deadliest plague - when small pox came to the "New World" and killed of 90% of the indigenous people there.

Then he goes back to the Roman Empire.  Here's a description of one of many plagues.

"John of Ephesus noted that as people “were looking at each other and talking, they began to totter and fell either in the streets or at home, in harbors, on ships, in churches, and everywhere.” As he traveled in what is now Turkey, he was surrounded by death: “Day by day, we too — like everybody — knocked at the gate to the tomb … We saw desolate and groaning villages and corpses spread out on the earth, with no one to take up [and bury] them.” The population of Constantinople was probably reduced by between 50 and 60 percent. The first onslaught happened so quickly the streets became blocked by corpses, the dead “trodden upon by feet and trampled like spoiled grapes … the corpse which was trampled, sank and was immersed in the pus of those below it,” as John put it."

Sullivan points out that it is, precisely, the move toward civilizations and living with domesticated animals that allowed for viruses to be transmitted from animals to humans.  And travel then carried these to others.

An interesting piece, worth reading.  A lot longer than a tweet, but a lot more comprehensive and worth reading.

Responding To ADN Commentaries On Systemic Racism And White Privilege

I want to respond to two recent Anchorage Daily News commentaries on race.  The first titled:  "Is our problem with racism systemic?"  Michael Oblath asked whether racism was genetically built into human beings, because, as he writes,

"If true, how could we ever heal?"  

And in the next sentence he essentially says no.

"Racism then, is a conscious choice we make, and is not systemic"

 I have questions about how he reached that conclusion, but my main concern is how he framed ‘systemic racism’ as an individual issue rather than how it’s normally seen,  as a societal systemic issue.  Perhaps, given the word constraints the ADN imposes, he left out any mention of societal systemic racism.  But because he wrote, "Racism then . . . is not systemic" I feel compelled to reply.

Our society has built legal, educational, financial, and cultural obstacles  that systematically set up barriers for people of color, particularly black Americans, that white Americans don't face. 

Housing covenants kept black Americans from buying property in white neighborhoods. Red-lining kept property values low in black neighborhoods and made loans in those neighborhoods hard to get, keeping property values there low.  Schools in those neighborhoods were poorer so the students had a harder time getting into colleges.  So people couldn't get the kind of jobs that would move them out of poverty.  Bank loans in those ghettos were hard to get, so starting a business was a greater challenge than in white areas.

The media - news, tv, films - projected images of blacks living in slums, poor, uneducated, and likely criminals. Politicians campaigned with these biased images. Reagan railed against "Welfare Queens in Cadillacs.”

These biased portrayals,  reinforced whites stereotypes of blacks.  The forces that kept black baseball players out of major league baseball for so long have also kept blacks out of other white domains.  Instead of seeing the systemic legal and administrative barriers, whites internalized these images of  people with no work ethic, with lower educational ability, who often turned to crime.

Thus teachers assumed they were less intelligent.  Lenders believed they wouldn't pay back their loans.  Employers feared they wouldn't work hard and honestly.

Thus systemic societal racism was reinforced by individual prejudice.  Without being aware of and understanding this systemic racism, it is very hard to understand the concept of White Privilege which was the topic of the second commentary I want to address. by Alexander Dolitsky, titled:

"White privilege in America today"

Dolitsky tells how he immigrated to the US from Russia at age 25 with nothing and has managed to overcome obstacles to success.  I sincerely congratulate him on his achievements.

It seems, though, that Dolitsky feels he did all this through his own hard work and that white privilege played no part.  "What exactly is my ‘white privilege?’  I and millions of other immigrants faced challenges not encountered by people born and raised here . . .”  He resents being accused of benefiting from 'white privilege.'  He writes:  

"I and many other Caucasian immigrants are supposed to be ashamed because we are white? I am offended by this racial slur — or stereotype."

I’d note that my parents were 17 and 23 when they arrived in the US, alone, with very little, and learned English and made successful lives in the US too.  

To respond to  Dolitsky's belief people think he should be ashamed of being white:  No, immigrants need not be ashamed of being white. And yes, Dolitsky’s hard work was the key to his success.  But the structural racism I outlined above meant it was easier for him than, say, an immigrant from Somalia or Haiti. 

Black immigrants, in addition to the things Dolitsky faced,  have to worry about being routinely stopped by police because they look ‘suspicious.’ They have greater difficulties renting an apartment or getting a job because of people's stereotypes of black skinned people.  They may find it harder to mingle with white Americans socially, to date white Americans, because of the color of their skin.  

But just as immigrants face obstacles and overcome them, many African-Americans manage to overcome the racial barriers they face as well.  

But even successful blacks know that when they are out in public, they are no longer doctors, lawyers, professors, or CEOs.  They are just seen by many as ‘black’ to use a polite term.  And successful blacks still worry when their teenage kids go out. They know that when white teenagers get rowdy, it's "kids just being kids." But when black kids do the same thing, they are much more likely to be arrested.

If one only sees systemic racism as an individual problem and not a societal problem as Oblath discusses it, then one doesn’t see all the structural systemic obstacles that blacks face in the US that whites don’t face. 

We could say that White privilege = (obstacles blacks face) - (obstacles similarly situated whites face.)  By 'similarly situated' I mean whites who basically have a very similar background and general characteristics as a comparable black.  Yes, for example, disabled whites have obstacles most able-bodied people don't have.  But not as many as a disabled black person with basically the same background.   

So, no, Dolitsky shouldn't be ashamed of his white skin.  And he should be proud of what he’s achieved. But he should recognize that if he’d immigrated from Africa, he would have faced additional obstacles.  Those additional obstacles are what we call 'White Privilege.'  

Talking about “White Privilege” doesn’t take away any of his achievements.  But denying white privilege exists makes it harder to dismantle the extra obstacles black Americans face. 

And I'd note many, if not most, white Americans have no sense of the daily indignities many blacks face, simply because they are blacks. Many blacks have dealt with this by limiting their interactions in the world as much as possible to places where they are known.   So it's much easier to understand an immigrant not understanding.  White media, until very recently, has ignored all this.  The narrative has been that once legal segregation was over, everyone was treated the same.  

Robots, Internet, Long Distance Babysitting

Part of my electronic babysitting duties includes helping my grandson construct robots.  The book has dozens of robots with all the parts ready to be punched out of the templates and then constructed with a little help from glue.   I read the directions and he does the work.

If you can't read the description, the EVV is a professional stunt-bot and dare devil, 3 feet tall.  It's abilities include extreme agility and strength; complete lack of fear.

Here's the completed robot - the EVV.

Last night our internet crashed, after business hours.  This morning we got through after about 25 minutes.  While they couldn't fix it while I was on the phone, but once she sent it to the next level it was back on.

And it seems much better.  We've been having really slow speeds.  Too slow to have one grandkid on Jitsi and another one on Zoom.  But today while I was with M, Z called to see if we could zoom, and they both worked fine.  But I passed Z off to her grandmother.  I wasn't up for both on two different platforms.

It's certainly not the same as being there, but it is like being in the same room.  Sometimes we have conversations, sometimes we just do our own thing, but we can hear each other and make comments.  The kids are good at working on things independently, but they do like someone around to show their work to.  An arrangement that works for me.  And attending to your grandkids is always a legitimate excuse to not be doing other things on your list.

Mask Murderers? And Another Misleading Headline On Race Relations

1.  Virus Notes

Yes, it's a paradox - the more you shut things down, the more it hurts the economy, but then the less you shut things down, the higher the cases go, and that hurts the economy too.  So, accept the economy is going to take a big hit.  If most people wear masks in public, we could open sooner.  Now, will that be with a few deaths or with lots of deaths?  That's the decision.  It's not the economy this time, it's the virus, stupid!

Since I wrote that note here a few days ago I ran across an article  From University of California San Francisco:

"The latest forecast from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation suggests that 33,000 deaths could be avoided by October 1 if 95 percent of people wore masks in public."

 

 30,000 deaths!!??  Dare I call those not wearing masks in public - Mask Murderers?  It almost works, though unmasked murderers would probably be more accurate.  

And if you think there are hardcore folks who won't wear masks, because they won't give up their constitutional rights, wait until you tell parents they have to send their kids to schools that aren't COVID-19 safe.  But DeVos is all about destroying public schools and transferring public school funds to private schools.  This move by the president bleeds money from public schools, and gives Republicans new ways to point at how bad public schools are.  But I think the president's dementia is so obvious to so many people now that it will backfire.


2.  Misleading Headlines  - in March 2019 I put up a post that is still getting regular hits today on Misleading Headlines.  That article goes into the history of misleading headlines.

Well I was struck yesterday by  a very misleading printed LA Times headline, which had a much better headline in the online version.  I've seen that before.  I guess editors have more room online.  I'm not sure how many people actually buy hard copy papers because of headlines any more, but if they do, there is the pressure to make them more compelling still I guess.


The paper headline and first paragraph was:

"Outlooks on race turn gloomier

"Californians’ perceptions of race relations in the state have shifted dramatically since the spring, with views statewide having grown significantly gloomier than they were five months ago, according to a new statewide poll."

Here's screenshot of the paper version:

I read the article, and actually, it's a hopeful article.  Basically, it said that since COVID and George Floyd, people's beliefs about race relations in the US are less positive.  That's not gloomier, which suggests things are getting worse.  But what I took from that was that white people's attitudes got more realistic.  And you have to stop denying before you start changing.  So it's all good.  

When I looked for the link to the online version to put on this post, I found a very different headline - one that mirrored my take on the article:

"Views on race relations in state alter dramatically as more white people see reality of discrimination, survey shows"

NOTE:  I've put up screenshots of the headlines, but I've also repeated them with text.  I do this when I can and it seems important, because seeing-impaired readers can't 'read' images.  the programs that turn text to sound can't read images.

Why Being Right Is So Satisfying, Even When You Would Prefer To Be Wrong

As those of you who follow this blog somewhat regularly know, I've been monitoring the daily changes in Alaska's COVID-19 count. (See the COVID-19 tab above.)  I've also been trying to keep up with what various people are discovering about the virus and how it spreads, both for my own personal protection as well as to be informed when I comment on our numbers.

When the Governor loosened the isolation rules for Alaska, I predicted that we would see an uptick in our numbers.  And that's happening.  Yesterday we had a new case high of 51 (not including non-residents) and today we blew past that with 64 new cases.

As the numbers have gone up I've been thinking about the internal conflict between wanting to be right, but wanting the virus to stay controlled, with low daily new case counts.

I can only speak about myself here. I  googled "Why do people want to be right?" to see what those who study this might say, compared to what I think.  But all the hits were for "Why do people NEED to be right?"  That wasn't my question.  All those articles talk about a culture of competition, needing to win, needing to not be wrong.  Much is in the context of marriage counseling - Would you rather be right or happy?  The articles talk about the complexity of issues and different perspectives which make 'being right' far more ambiguous.

But I've never been particularly competitive.  When I played tennis, I cared more about playing well than who won.   And I've figured out that in most cases, I don't NEED to be right.  My striving tends to be for understanding.  I could argue with someone about a topic and I can be pretty aggressive about it.  But it's not to 'win.'  It's to challenge the other person to show me the flaws in my thinking so I can get closer to the truth.

After that search for studies on why people want to be right failed, I remembered that BF Skinner had said that being right can itself a positive reinforcer.  And I found this: 

"According to Skinner, simply "being effective" or "being right" may be innately reinforcing."  

 Though since Skinner was usually a stickler for objective proof, this seems a little  soft for him.  He defined a reinforcer as something that causes you to repeat a behavior, when he saw people getting the right answer repeating their actions, with no apparent rewards,  he decided being right itself was the reinforcer. Not quite as objective as rats getting food by pushing a lever.  But  I think it is true for me.


A lot of this became much clearer when I took the DISC - a management personality test -  a long time ago and found out I was on the bottom of the Dominance scale.

For each of the four scales, Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness, there's a list of positive descriptors for each of the four characteristic and a negative list.  The thesis is that when you're doing well, you would exhibit the positive aspects and when stressed, the negative aspects.  For instance, if you score high in Dominance, the top of the scale was a descriptor like "Leader" on the good side and "Tyrant" on the negative side.  (I'm going by the test I took over 40 years ago.  I'm having trouble finding detailed descriptions of today's versions of the DISC - maybe because they want you to take the test before revealing the meaning.)

 I was stunned to learn I'd scored on the bottom of the Dominance scale.  My descriptor on the positive side was "Meek."  If that was the positive side, I was afraid to look at the negative side.  I felt better when I read the dictionary definition of meek.  (When I check online definitions today, their more like what I was thinking back then - spineless.)

But basically as I remember the definition that comforted me was something about not wanting to dominate other people.  So the biblical quote about the meek inheriting the earth, made more sense.   I think that's a natural tendency in me that was only strengthened by living in a Buddhist country for three years.

So, when I claim that my sometimes persistent  style is not about beating the other person, I have my DISC score to back me up.  I don't want to be right as much as to find out what is right.  If you present me with logic or evidence that is convincing, I'm happy, and I'll willingly acknowledge that you were right.  (Unless you've been a real jerk about it, then I'll do it a little less willingly.)

So as I try to answer this question about why is being right so satisfying, it's not about winning.  Rather, it's about having my understanding of things confirmed.  Having the way I think and solve problems proven to be useful to successfully navigating the world.

Lots of things in the world, as the psychologists pointed out in the articles on 'needing to be right'  just aren't right v wrong issues.  There are lots of complications and shades of gray.

So when there is something where facts can bear out what your mental models predicted, it's satisfying.  I think that's one reason why sports are so popular.  At the end of the game there's a resolution.  Your predictions about the winner or the score or the nature of the game, is known fairly quickly at the end of nine innings or four quarters.

The spread of COVID-19 is also born out with facts.  Based on what the science was telling us about how the virus spread, I believed that if more people mingled in public, in closed spaces, many without masks, that our numbers would rise.  And that's what's happening.  (And it's why our president wants to stop testing - so the numbers won't prove him wrong.  I'd note that I'm sure Trump would test over the top of the Dominance scale.)

Feeling good about predicting that our numbers would go up comes from the sense of control one gets from knowing that one can examine a situation and sort through different arguments and pick the ones that predict what actually happens.  It makes me feel safer when I stay home and avoid any indoor contact with others, and limit my outdoor contact.  I can lower the odds of contracting COVID-19.  The risks I take are minimum - biking on sparsely populated bike trails, with a mask ready to pull up if someone approaches, ordering food online and having it delivered to the car in the parking lot.  Washing my hands after getting the mail or newspaper.  Probably getting a little extreme, but it doesn't take that much effort or time.

I imagine others might come up with other non-winning kinds of reasons being right feels good.

Yet I don't want our COVID-19 numbers to go up.  I guess it's like betting against your favorite team - you don't want your team to lose, but if you're going to lose, you get something positive out of it.  I wonder if those folks who bet on a steep drop in the stock market have mixed feelings when they win big on someone else's disaster.   I suspect not.  There, being right is rewarding, but mainly because it allows one to cash in.

This all gets more complicated when there are real or perceived consequence for being wrong.  Politicians who downplayed what COVID-19 would do, tend to scramble to find the right language to say they were right all along, but that circumstances had changed.

And I would say, that you needed a better model that would have considered those possible circumstances and the probability they would occur.

Garth Jones Leaves A Big Hole As He Leaves Us At 95

I saw the obituary in the ADN yesterday morning before my bike ride.  The picture was of a man who lived  at least 25 years before I met him - young and handsome.

As I rode, it hit me that this man influenced my life more than most people I've known - if it weren't for Garth Jones, it's unlikely I would have ended up in Alaska.  He was the Dean of the School of Business and Public Administration in the late 1970s and was looking to fill a position.  He contacted his colleagues at USC, where he had taught earlier and one of them showed me the job announcement.  I'd been in Anchorage about 8 hours - from 6am to 1pm - about eight years earlier after Peace Corps training.  I'd gone home to LA for the weekend and then flew to Anchorage to meet the plane that was carrying us all to Tokyo, then Hong Kong, then Bangkok.  It had been a spectacular August day and I was astounded by how beautiful it was.

But I wasn't finished with my dissertation and had seen too many people who had taken jobs before finishing their degrees.  It was clear I needed to finish before leaving so I didn't apply.  But the faculty member had stayed another year and when I was finished, the position was open and I applied and was selected.

So in September 1977 I met Garth Jones, my new boss, and the only other faculty member there with a degree in Public Administration.  He was also probably the oldest member of the SPA faculty.  And I'd never met a person like him in my life.  He nurtured me and he drove me crazy.  Over the years he shared a lot about his life, and while I was trying to impress him as a young faculty member, he seemed also trying to impress me.

Early on I remember a dispute we had.  The university had $10,000 allotted to open a childcare center.  I had two children under 4 years old.  A preschool on campus would be perfect for us.  Garth was 100% opposed.  University money should be spent on students and college education, not child care.  So Garth, I continued, supposed someone donated $10,000 to the University that could only be used for day care, would you still be opposed?  Yes, I would.  Young children should be at home raised by their mothers.

He came from a poor Mormon sheep farming family in southern Utah. At times there wasn't a lot of food, he'd tell me. He married into Mormon royalty.  Women were supposed to stay home and take care of their kids.

But, Garth, I argued, you told me I couldn't afford to live in Anchorage if my wife didn't work.  So how can she work if we don't have child care?  You're different Steve.  You're Jews and you value education and take care of your kids well.  It turned out that Garth had a strong admiration for Jews, though it didn't always come out in ways that sounded complimentary.

What this exchange meant to me was that while we disagreed strongly on a number of important issues, Garth would be honest with me if I pushed past his initial assertions.  It was also my first introduction to his, sometimes odd, but sincere admiration for the value that he felt Jews put on education and scholarship.

Garth also had an inherent thirst for learning which, in his telling, made him something of an oddball in his community as a kid.  He had read voluminously and there were lots of words he had read, but had never heard anyone say out loud.  For a number of these book-learned words, he had his own unique pronunciation.  He'd made his way through college and into the State Department and ended up in Pakistan where he helped establish the discipline of public administration there and helped teach the members of the civil service.  As someone from a poor background, he was not a typical foreign service officer.  He learned Urdu and got along too well with the locals.  When he was reassigned to Indonesia the same thing happened.  He told me he got chastised for getting too close to the natives.  Perhaps my Peace Corps experience in Thailand was something he could relate to when he saw my application.

When he came back he got a faculty position at USC which had faculty who had had grants to help with Garth's public administration work in Pakistan.  He also published an article that was critical of the State Department bureaucracy that was unusual in its very personal tone as well as its frankness.  I immediately gained a lot of respect for Garth when I eventually read the article.

"Failure of Technical Public Administration Abroad:  A Personal Note" begins:

"Am I a Dodo?
Thirteen years of one’s professional life is a sizeable period to devote largely to one cause: technical assistance in public administration abroad. Ten of these years were spent in Southeast and South Asia, equally divided between Indonesia and Pakistan, and three years were spent in Los Angeles serving as the academic advisor to the University of Southern California Pakistan project. Since November 1956, my life has been almost completely absorbed in reforming or building public administration systems in Asian cultures-and I mean absorbed. During my last tour abroad, six weeks short of five years, I spent only two weeks in the United States and only six weeks away from Pakistan. My professional perspective of foreign aid is solely field oriented. My knowledge of Washington operations remains largely confined to memoranda, periodic meetings with headquarters personnel in the field, short and hurried debriefings in Washington, and scholarly works. Washington operations in my mind represent a rather confused, and I guess, distorted picture. I have never spent enough time in Washington to understand the real "bureaucracy" if that is ever possible.
With my return to the United States in September 1969, I felt for the first time in my professional life that I was a "Dodo." Was I professionally obsolete in my chosen vocational field of foreign aid? My thinking on the subject appeared certainly out of keeping with the current trends as I "felt" and "saw" them in the field.
Few persons - practitioners and scholars alike - question the prerequisite of a reliable public administration system for mounting a successful, planned development program. Beyond this, little can be written. Technical assistance in public administration the world over is yearly being given less importance in planned development programs. I do not believe that this decline necessarily indicates that the mission of technical assistance has been successfully accomplished, but rather that those of us who have a vested interest in public administration technical assistance have not been able to convince those who exercise "real bureaucratic" power that we have a valid body of knowledge which is useful in the development process."

As a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) I could relate to someone on the ground in Asia thinking that those in Washington DC (the headquarters in Bangkok, even) didn't have an understanding of things 'on the ground' upcountry.

This slightly renegade outsider perspective also tied us together.

There's lots of posts worth of Garth stories, but let me just note a few more issues:

Donations - Garth amassed a enough money, that he was regularly setting up scholarships for students, research awards, and donations to academic programs he thought were doing important things.  

Marie - No post about Garth would be complete with mention of his wife Marie.  She was a force of nature and a fearless promoter and protector of Garth.  If you were on her good side, your life was made easier.  If you were on her bad side, watch out.  She also fiercely watched out for their children as did Garth.

Racquet ball - Garth was winning racquet ball games with much younger opponents well into his 60s.  He didn't run around much on the court, but he would regularly put the ball in the farthest corner from you, or he'd hit so it died and rolled on the ground after barely touching the front wall.

Mormon Rebel - Garth wrote regularly for a Mormon journal called Dialogue. The link goes to an issue with an article by Garth.   It's a journal on the fringes of the faith, enough so that its editor at one point got excommunicated.  While Garth was regularly meeting with local Mormons giving counsel and help as needed, and considered himself a devoted Mormon, he didn't necessarily agree with all their policies.  I remember him talking about birth control and the problems he saw with large families, where children ended up raising their brothers and sisters because there were too many for the parents to give close attention to them all.  His support and contributions to the Dialogue were one way he expressed this.

The world has lost a truly unique person, full of contradictions, who spent his whole life working to make the world a better place.  I can hear his chortle like laugh as I write this.  The closest I ever heard him come to swearing was his regular exclamation - "What in Sam Hill!!" - though Hill usually sounded like it had an 'e' in it.

While All Eyes Were On The President's Tax Returns, The SC Made A Big Decision For Native Americans

This post is here just to draw attention to this case.  Justice Gorsuch wrote the opinion and was joined by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, Ginsburg, and Kagan.  The opening of Gosuch's opinion in McGirt v. Oklahoma reads:

"On the far end of the Trail of Tears was a promise. Forced to leave their ancestral lands in Georgia and Alabama, the Creek Nation received assurances that their new lands in the West would be secure forever. In exchange for ceding “all their land, East of the Mississippi river,” the U. S. gov- ernment agreed by treaty that “[t]he Creek country west of the Mississippi shall be solemnly guarantied to the Creek Indians.” Treaty With the Creeks, Arts. I, XIV, Mar. 24, 1832, 7 Stat. 366, 368 (1832 Treaty). Both parties settled on boundary lines for a new and “permanent home to the whole Creek nation,” located in what is now Oklahoma. Treaty With the Creeks, preamble, Feb. 14, 1833, 7 Stat. 418 (1833 Treaty). The government further promised that “[no] State or Territory [shall] ever have a right to pass laws for the government of such Indians, but they shall be al- lowed to govern themselves.” 1832 Treaty, Art. XIV, 7 Stat. 368.
Today we are asked whether the land these treaties promised remains an Indian reservation for purposes of federal criminal law. Because Congress has not said other- wise, we hold the government to its word."  (emphasis added)

McGirt appealed his conviction on sex abuse in Oklahoma state courts arguing that because they occurred in Indian Country the State did not have jurisdiction.  The Supreme Court agreed.


From the National Congress of American Indians:

“Through two terms of the United States Supreme Court, and as many cases and fact patterns, this question has loomed over federal Indian law. This morning, NCAI joins the rest of Indian Country in congratulating the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and proudly asserting that its lands remain, and will forever be considered, Indian country – as guaranteed in their treaty relationship with the United States,” said NCAI President Fawn Sharp.

I don't know much about the history of this case, but my sense is that it's a pretty big deal.  I'd note the Chief Justice Roberts argued the Venetie case before the Supreme Court.  He was a dissenter in today's decision.

State officials in Oklahoma seem to be pledging to make this all work out.

This week's decisions seem to indicate that not all the members of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court are as predictable as some expected.

Corona Art - Old Friend Gets Recognized Again

Got an email today from my friend Tomás.  He's a friend I met through the blog.  He left a comment and we connected before he returned with his family to Spain. That story was in 2010 and includes Exit Glacier.  He's been in Kentucky this year while his wife teaches Spanish in a high school.  Tomás is an architect and artist.

He wrote to let me know that the Washington Post invited readers to send in their pandemic art.  They got 650 submissions and Tomás was picked in their top 20.  Here's his picture, Corona Rising.

 

You can see the other 19 they picked, plus some of the honorable mentions here.  It's an impressive collection of very different visions.  

History Catching Up To Us - Civil War Statues And Integrating New Orleans Schools

Rick Steves interviewed Jason Cochran, author of "Here Lies America." Cochran spoke about traveling to places where bad things happened and how they've been repackaged.  He talks a lot about the South - he's from Georgia - and how civil war battlefields were rebranded into tourist spots that glorified the world.  Here's a bit about a concerted effort to place Johnny Reb statues all over the South in the first two decades of the 20th Century.

"Drive through American South, and I’m from Georgia by the way, in front of almost every court house  in every town, you’ll see the famous little statue of Johnny Reb, the guy from the Confederate Forces.  Every little town you go to you’ll find this.  What I discovered in the course of researching this is that never were these things placed there right after the civil war.  The war ended in 1865.  Look at the next one you drive past, look down at the plaque, look at the year.  I’ll bet you anything it is probably from the 19 zero years or the 19 teens.  You have to wonder.  This was 50 years after the fact.  There’s a story here.  How did they all suddenly show up. . .  It was a concerted propaganda effort for lack of a better word. I think it was an education effort is the way they would have put it.  Let’s pretend you’re a resident of the South and probably 25 years old in 1900 and your grandfather is a mess because he had been. in the war.  You hear stories about how much land you used to own so you’re upset that you don’t own that anymore.  So there’s a lot of resentment happening in the South.  So the children and the grandchildren of the people who went to the civil war and suffered those blows and death those blows, they were the ones who built these statues. Because they wanted to reframe or expand upon how people saw the South and what they thought they were fighting for at the time.  There are people, even today, who would tell you that what is written on those statues is not what they would have put on them in the 1860s because the passage of time had colored things, but it was an effort.  There were women’s groups, by the hundreds of thousands women joined these groups, they would put out a catalogue and you could pick which statue you wanted and they would send their members to hector and lobby local governments.  They would make sure those statues were never placed in the cemetery, where these statues would usually go, but in front of a school or town hall where people would make sure to see it."

 I was impressed at how apolitically this was all presented, as if there were no controversy going on today about removing statues that glorify the Confederacy.  It's just presented as factual history.


And related, is this passage from the book I'm reading for my next book club meeting - The Yellow House, by Sarah M. Broom.

"Woodson Elementary, McDonogh 96, Hoffman Junior High, and Booker T. Washington - Josephe's, Elaine's, and Ivory's schools - were segregated for all of their school years and long after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education, the results of which were not seen in New Orleans until November 1960 when three six year-olds, Tessie Provost, Leona Tate, and Gail Etienne, dressed in full skirts and patent leather shoes, with massive white bows atop their heads, arrived in an all-white McDonogh 19, where they would remain the only three students in the school that entire year, taught in classrooms with brown paper taped to windows, blocking sun and jeers from white parents raging outside.  The same day in November first grader Ruby Bridges, the lone black girl surrounded by three US marshals, integrated William Frantz Elementary, spending half a school year as the only student.  A decade later, on the even of the 1970s, integration in New Orleans high schools would still cause riots.  Four decades later, it would remain factually incorrect to describe New Orleans schools as fully integrated."

Karens and Kevins have been around a long time.